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The eighth part in a series of eleven book reviews.

From the 1930s to the 1950s Raymond Chandler penned a stylish collection of short stories and novels within the crime fiction genre.

I’m rereading his work and writing reviews. More details about the who, what and why are explained here in part one.

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Review Number: 13 (8 in Chandler series)
Review Date: 25 January 2016

Title: The Lady in the Lake
Author: Raymond Chandler
Country: United States
Publication Date: 1943
Genre: Crime Fiction

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Nobody yelled or ran out of the door. Nobody blew a police whistle. Everything was quiet and sunny and calm. No cause for excitement whatever. It’s only Marlowe, finding another body. He does it rather well by now. Murder-a-day Marlowe, they call him. They have the meat wagon following him around to follow up on the business he finds.

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A businessman’s wife is missing. He doesn’t want her back. He just wants to know she’s still alive.

It’s an unsentimental journey for the private detective, Philip Marlowe, in Raymond Chandler’s fourth crime novel The Lady in the Lake.

This is a cold, slick tale full of obnoxious characters. The businessman, Derace Kingsley, like many others before and after him, has let power corrupt him. He talks to Marlowe like dirt. And as you’d expect, Marlowe talks back.

A lot of the action takes place a long way from Los Angeles, namely a small mountain town. Frankly, his books read better when set in L.A. – which W.H. Auden called ‘the great wrong place’. So this one falls within the same category as his third book The High Window – intriguing and entertaining – but not a classic like the first two novels.

The book’s title might make the outcome obvious (or it might not, I’m not saying), but as this is Chandler at work we kind of know it’s going to be complex, cynical and often witty:

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There was a desk and a night clerk with one of those moustaches that get stuck under your fingernail.
Degarmo lunged past the desk towards an open elevator beside which a tired old man sat on a stool waiting for a customer. The clerk snapped at Degarmo’s back like a terrier.
“One moment please. Whom did you wish to see?”
Degarmo spun on his heel and looked at me wonderingly. “Did he say ‘whom’?”
“Yeah, but don’t hit him,” I said. “There is such a word.”
Degarmo licked his lips. “I knew there was,” he said. “I often wondered where they kept it.”

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In fact, the title The Lady in the Lake is a nod to Arthurian legends which Chandler loved and admired. Marlowe is our noble knight on a quest for justice. By the way, back in the 1930s, Chandler almost called him ‘Mallory’ – inspired by Sir Thomas Malory, the author of Le Morte D’Arthur.

Sadly, the missing lady is not quite the pure and ethereal ‘damsel in distress’ of mediaeval times. Our novel is set in the 1940s and she’s got a drink problem and a penchant for shoplifting.

While Chandler did his job and produced a fine story, the movie business failed to deliver. Again.

The 1947 film Lady in the Lake was directed by Robert Montgomery. It’s uninspiring and forgettable. Not only did Montgomery make his directorial debut, he also starred as Marlowe.

The movie is notable for an odd camera technique. Montgomery used a first-person style, so the whole film is shot from the viewpoint of Marlowe. We only see what he does. It didn’t work in 1947. It just feels awkward and plodding. (It would work today, as we have handheld cameras and improved pacing and techniques.)

All of Chandler novel’s used a first-person narrative style. They worked because he understood plot, character development, humour and … well, everything really.

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“I’m all done with hating you. It’s all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don’t hate them very long.”

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